


With the Dawn

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: AU of an AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Kidfic, Multi, Polyamory, Triad Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 06:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19204090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Now, when I think back on that night, I realize that if things had happened just a little differently, those rebels might have snuck into the grounds and found King Min’s three children snuggled under a blanket and sleeping like babies.Right before they took us hostage, or maybe just cut our throats.But it didn’t happen that way.  Instead, they got the surprise of their lives.





	With the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Other Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483772) by [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss). 



> This is a story that's an AU of BunnyMoss's fantastic fic The Other Daughter. That story is about how Pagan and her OC Vanya Rotenberg meet (under inauspicious circumstances) and interact (like two pissed honey badgers), and how they eventually move past all that. It's a wonderful story that I highly recommend.
> 
> But one day, as we were discussing said fic, one of us said (and I still have no idea who)...what if Pagan and Vanya had an Ajay Agreement? And thus the Triad AU was born. And THIS story takes place some thirteen or fourteen years after Ajay comes to Kyrat, and concerns Pagan and Vanya and Ajay's three children. Confusing? Perhaps. Completely out of left field? Assuredly. But I hope you'll find it entertaining anyway.
> 
> Thanks go to [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/pseuds/brokibrodinson) and [Thegirlnamedhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegirlnamedhawk/pseuds/Thegirlnamedhawk) for helping with this off-the-wall fic. Your feedback was immensely helpful.

***

 

 

In our family, we all have a lot of names. I am Min Lijian, and Patthar, but everyone just calls me Jian. I am China and Russia and America and England, but above all I am Kyrati. And to say that my childhood was _interesting_ is a bit of an understatement.

The year that I turned eight was the year that I finally started to get along with my two sisters, Khilana and Pani. Khilana was something of a bully. She was twelve and big for her age, and was loud like Papa and Mama. Pani was much smaller and quiet like Ada, but they always teamed up against me. They sensed weakness, I guess. I always ran and hid from them, even though I was growing fast and was rapidly catching up to Khilana. I didn’t want to fight with them and my tongue always seemed to trip over itself when I tried to tease them back, so I ran and hid.

One rainy day when we were playing inside, Ada Ajay found me hiding and asked what I was doing. I hardly ever complained, but something about Ada made him easy to talk to.

“They’re so mean to me. I don’t…I want to _like_ them,” I told him, with tears in my eyes. “I want to, Ada, but they make it really hard, and Pani always takes _her_ side.”

Ada didn’t laugh at me, and he didn’t dismiss my worries, or tell me to stop sniveling. He crouched there easily beside the cabinet I had hidden in, his big hands resting between his knees.

“I want to tell you a story,” he said seriously. “Once upon a time, before you came along, Khilana and Pani fought a lot too. Well, I take that back. Fighting implies that Pani was standing up for herself, but it was pretty one-sided. It was a lot like you guys are now, with Khilana being mean and Pani hiding from her. Or she’d just sit down and cry. They were both pretty little at the time.”

“So what happened? They’re like best friends now.”

“Well, Papa Pagan kept warning Khilana that she had better be nicer to her sister, or Pani was going make her regret being mean. But she didn’t believe him. She kept on, and kept on…and one day, Pani had _enough._ She dove on top of Khilana, snarling like a honey badger and pinned her down and _bit_ her. And Khilana screamed bloody murder, like Pani was killing her. I went to drag Pani off of her but Mama said no, let her learn her lesson. And Papa Pagan laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard he was crying while Khilana squalled and Pani growled and I had to get up and go get a vod…I mean a soda, because it was just way too loud in there.”

My eyes were wide. “I don’t understand.”

“From then on, Khilana respected her. She was a little wary of her for a day or two, but as long as Khilana was halfway decent to her, Pani was nice and sweet. They’ve been close ever since.”

I thought hard. “So what you’re saying is…”

“Pummel Khilana. Just knock her flat on her as…I mean butt, and she’ll respect you, and Pani will respect you because Khilana does. You’ll only have to do it the one time. And I know you can, you’re doing great in your Krav Maga lessons.”

Lessons were one thing. Wrestling around with him and Papa and the instructor, doing the drills…that was _playing._ Dropping my older sister and putting her in an arm bar until she screamed for mercy was something else, and he must’ve seen my trepidation because he held his arms out. He hugged me tightly and tipped my face up to look into it, and his own softened into a little smile just like it always did. Everybody told me I looked just like pictures of Papa when he was a little boy, only with more freckles.

“You’re a good, sweet boy Jian. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You might be able to find another way, if you think about it,” he said, and kissed my hair as I breathed in his wild smell. He always seemed to smell like a forest, like fresh air and moss and old leaves and growing things, like mysterious places. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up, my other father.

As it turned out, I really didn’t get the chance to send Khilana flying like Ada recommended. I also didn’t need to, since something happened that drove the three of us together better than anything else could have. Well, I _did_ flatten her, but definitely not the way that Ada had meant.

 

That year I was eight was a rough year for Papa and Mama and Ada. They tried to keep the bad things from us kids, the political stuff, but despite their best efforts Kyrat was still in many ways a wild, lawless place. It was more peaceful then, not like when Ada and Mama had first come to Kyrat during the Second Civil War, but armed uprisings by this or that faction weren’t uncommon either. They tried to keep the worst of it from us, but they also taught us how to fight and how to shoot and how important security measures were.

That year there were a lot of whispered conferences and stacks of reports at the breakfast table. Papa was gone a lot. Mama would stare off to the south, her eyes hard and cold. Ada stayed closer to the Palace than he usually did instead of helping villagers or hunting in the woods.

A noise woke me one night while I was in bed. I was a light sleeper even as a kid and occasionally they woke me with their moaning and groaning, but Mama had told us they were just happy grownup noises and nothing to worry about and to go back to sleep if we heard them. But this was a different kind of noise, so I got up to see.

It was Papa in the living room looking for his shoes, still half-asleep. I looked at the clock and it said two-thirty. He had accidentally dropped his belt on the tiled floor, and that was the sound that had woken me.

“It’s all right, Jian,” he said, and then yawned hugely. “I just have to go down to the Fortress for a little while, just some work things to take care of.” He tried to reassure me, but none of it was normal, and I remember feeling cold and afraid.

“Papa…” But I didn’t know what to say. My sisters were still asleep. Mama and Ada were still asleep. It was only me and him, and he had to leave in the middle of the night.

“Shhh,” as he shrugged his heavy coat on. I wanted to be a big boy and not be afraid…but I went to him and slid my arms around his waist. He hugged me back, engulfing me in his big warm arms. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, with a little twinkle in his eye. “Don’t tell your sisters, but I bet if you go get in bed with Ada and Mama, they won’t mind.”

We weren’t usually allowed to sleep with them, or allowed in their bedroom at all, but he could sense my distress. We tiptoed in there and he held the warm covers up for me and I climbed in their big bed and settled against Mama’s back. He covered me up and kissed my forehead and leaned over me to kiss Mama on the mouth, and then he went around to the other side of the bed where Mama was holding Ada and kissed him too, which woke him a little. Papa whispered something in his ear and kissed him again and I didn’t even remember him going, I fell asleep that fast.

I woke hours later with Papa carrying me back to my own bed, and his hands were cold and he smelled strange, like incense and his good cologne like usual but also like dirt, like blood. But maybe I only dreamed that part.

 

The next morning everything was back to normal, except that I thought he might fall asleep over the _sel roti_ and coffee.

Mama had laughed at him nodding. “Go take a nap _dusha,_ Ajay and I can hold down the fort for a while. I’ll wake you if anything happens,” and he smiled tiredly and went back to bed.

Nothing happened that day, or even that week, but one day the whole Palace was astir with…something. All the adults were in and out, Gary was there on the radio, and we kids just tried to stay out from underfoot. We kept the tv on low and tried not to be scared, but it was obvious that something was really, really wrong. The grownups kept their voices low, but there were still scary words, a lot of which we didn’t really know or couldn’t put together, like ‘separatists’ and ‘suicide bombings’ and ‘compromised,’ and in the face of all that even bossy Khilana was quiet for once.

At some point Papa said on the radio, “Kamran, get De Pleur on that,” and I knew he was talking about Grampaul. I hoped he was okay. Khilana got up and pulled me and Pani into the playroom.

“I think that if we’re _really really_ quiet that the adults will forget all about us and we might be able to hear something important, like spies.”

“Yeah? I think that’s a good idea. Let’s get the Legos out and we can sit in the floor and play with them,” said Pani.

“But we gotta not rake through them too loud, okay? Or they’ll remember that we’re there and send us to bed,” Khilana said, and we both agreed. So we went back out there like little mice and were quiet as quiet could be in the hopes of hearing something, which was still scary but a lot less so if we thought of it like a spy game. We were also all dying of curiosity right through our fear.

We didn’t have to wait all that long. As I was building something that looked vaguely like an elephant to carry Pani’s cannon she built, Gary clattered back through the entryway and didn’t keep his voice down this time.

“Kamran’s down. His men managed to get him to the rear and he’s in surgery. They’ve nearly breached the first gate,” and Papa slammed his big fist down on the counter _hard,_ making us jump, and Mama spat a lot of the kinds of words that we weren’t supposed to say, most of which I didn’t know the meaning of until I was as old as Khilana.

Only Ada was quiet, like still water, like a forest before a storm. He walked over to the big windows in front of the balcony and looked down towards the Fortress, and when I followed his gaze I realized I could see smoke rising from down there, where no smoke was supposed to be.

Ada turned back to look at Mama and Papa.

“Which two of us are going, and which one is gonna stay with the kids,” and that made Papa sag for some reason. Ada saw it and walked back towards him and pulled him into his arms. He reached out and snagged Mama too, and they stood there for a minute, the three of them with their heads pressed together and their arms around each other. I wanted to run over and add my arms too, but we were still trying to be unnoticed.

Eventually they separated a little.

“Get the dice. It’s the most fair, so you two won’t argue with me,” Papa told them, and his voice was so heavy.

Mama found one in the junk drawer and brought it back to the table. I’d seen them use it to decide things before, but it was mostly stuff like chores that nobody wanted to do, things like that. But this was way more serious. Papa was one and two, Mama was three and four, and Ada was five and six. And whatever they rolled, that was what they all had to stick to. Those were the rules. Mama picked it up and shook it around in her big hand for a few seconds, her face all hard. And then she sent it rolling with a clatter down the table, and Ada went to look at it.

“A two,” he said, and Papa sagged all over again.

 

The three of us watched them with wide eyes over the back of the couch, Legos forgotten. Mama and Ada went in the bedroom while Papa sat at the table and just stared at his hands. They came back out a few minutes later in Guard uniforms and with _rifles,_ and our eyes got a little wider. Papa didn’t say anything, just helped them with the body armor part, one and then the other. When that was done, all three of them stood there looking at each other.

Papa whispered something and Mama said, “No, I’m not gonna tell them goodbye. I fucking refuse, because we’ll be _right back,_ ” and Ada nodded. Papa reached for Mama and buried his hands in her hair and kissed her and kissed her, which ordinarily we’d giggle at, but watching them made my chest hurt a little. Then he held Ada and kissed him the same way, for ages, like he was trying to breathe him in, like he might never see them again.

As Mama reached for the door handle Papa turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to watch them leave, and when he did his eyes met mine and there were tears standing in them and I didn’t know what to do. He looked at us and tried to smile, but it was too tight to look happy. I half expected him to make us go to bed even though it was only early in the evening, just to get us out of his hair, but that wasn’t what ended up happening at all.

We weren’t yet so big that he couldn’t gather us all up in his arms and that’s what he did, squashing us together. Ordinarily we might have complained about it, but everything was so strange and frightening that we all just clung to him. He held us and held us and I could feel his heart beating through the soft silk of his shirt, fast and hard, and I think that scared me more than anything, knowing that he was scared too.

Papa Pagan was one of the pillars of my life, and he was so tall and strong and he carried a gun and everything. He was the _King,_ and for him to be frightened terrified me.

But I learned a lesson on bravery that night. He taught me that being brave has nothing to do with being scared, and everything to do with going ahead and doing what needs done anyway.

After a few minutes he let us go with a final pat or two. He wiped at his eyes, and his head came up and his back went straight. My Papa.

“Well kiddos, we all have some work that needs doing. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

Papa made us go get bundled up and while we were getting our coats and boots on, he went and got his big key ring out of their bedroom and we all followed him down to the armory. As he was unlocking the door, the radio he had clipped to his coat pocket squawked and someone said something in code. Papa thumbed it on and rattled off some more code stuff right back to whoever it was, as he shifted some crates around and carried a few to the door while we watched him. He organized the stuff into piles for us, and since Khilana was the biggest she got a big wooden crate that turned out to be full of grenades.

“Careful now, my dear,” he said, and winked. “Don’t drop them and blow us all to bits,” and she rolled her eyes, but just a little. She knew as well as Pani and I did that they wouldn’t go off even if she chucked them off the side of the mountain, not until you pulled the pins. Mama once said that Papa ‘tended to display inappropriate humor’ when he was upset, so I figured stuff like that was probably what she meant.

Since she was the littlest, Papa looped some ammo belts around Pani, and then set out some ammo cans for me to carry. Those cans were right at the limit of what I could handle, and I had already opened my mouth to say I can’t, it’s too much…until I saw him lift down one of the big MG42’s and heft it onto his shoulder, reach down and pick up an ammo can and tuck it under his arm, and then snag _another_ in his free hand. I shut my mouth and told my scrawny arms they’d just have to carry it and that’s all there was to it.

We made trip after trip, back and forth from the armory up to the house, where he had us set the stuff down out on the balcony. My arms felt like noodles and Pani and I rested while Khilana helped him mount the big gun on the bracket that was screwed into the porch rail. After that we went back in to warm up, and Papa made coffee in the little kitchenette and _let us have some._ One little cup apiece, with cream and sugar. I didn’t much care for the taste of it, but it was hot and made me feel very grownup so I sipped at it anyway.

The whole time we sat there, the radio came on intermittently. Sometimes Papa answered it and sometimes he didn’t, so I guessed that not all the messages on that channel were for him. Once he squeezed it really, really tightly in his big hand, until the casing creaked a little, but as I watched he made himself put it down on the table and pick up his coffee cup instead. We were all really quiet, and I don’t know what my sisters were thinking but I remember just being really wary and waiting to see what happened next. I remember thinking about Ada and the way he’d be when he took me hunting with him, and how he’d watch everything around us real quiet and steady. That’s how I tried to be too, just like him.

As I sat there lost in those thoughts Papa’s radio went off again. But this time, whatever the man said on the other side made Papa stand up so fast his chair went flying, startling all three of us. He grabbed that radio and thumbed it on and _bellowed_ into it so loudly it hurt my ears a little.

“WHAT DO YOU FUCKING _MEAN_ YOU’VE LOST VISUAL ON THEM?! Don’t even try to give me that horseshit, you and Gary _get_ visual and _confirm it,_ do you fucking hear me?”

Papa roared at the soldier on the other side and kind of forgot that he was supposed to be using code, but he quickly went back to it as he paced. The tipped over chair was in his way and he kicked it hard enough to send it skittering all the way to the back of the room.

We looked at each other, wide-eyed and scared again, and I wasn’t sure but I was afraid something bad had happened to Mama and Ada, and I suddenly felt like I might throw up.

“Papa…” Pani whimpered, and he was right there by her.

“I’m so sorry baby…it’s all right. It’s going to be all right,” as he stroked her hair that was so like Ada’s, thick and always messy and sticking up. He hadn’t called any of us ‘baby’ in years.

I didn’t know if she was upset because of what might be happening to Ada and Mama or if she was upset that Papa was so mad, but I was glad that he was angry. If he was furious, he might not have as much room to be scared. Maybe my sisters couldn’t tell how afraid he was when he held us, but I knew that when he got this mad somebody was going to pay for it, and he would never let anything bad happen to Mama or Ada.

I believed this thoroughly, because I was only eight.

The radio kept squawking but Papa ignored it for a little while as he gathered us up close again, but this time to talk.

“I have to ask a big favor from the three of you. It’s really quite a big favor, so listen closely. I need for you to be grownups for me…but just for tonight. Just for this one night, I need you to grow up much, much too fast…but tomorrow I promise you that you can go back to being children, my little children again. You can go back to playing and having fun and being my sweet kids. Your Papa promises it, with everything in me.”

I looked up at him and made my childish face as firm as I could get it, which admittedly wasn’t very.

“Papa, what do you need us to do? Whatever it is, we’ll do it, okay,” I said.

Khilana piped up behind me. “Yeah! Don’t worry, Papa!” Pani didn’t say anything, but she was perked up and eager too. We wanted to help, to do _something_ besides sit and be afraid.

I thought he might smile, but he didn’t, not this time.

“I have to leave you three up here while I go down…while I go down to the Fortress and find your mother and father. So what I need you to do is guard yourselves. I need you to…oh god, I need you three to stay out on the fucking balcony and gun down anyone that gets close to you, can you do that? Khilana, do you still remember how to fire the big gun?”

She nodded eagerly. Now that we had something to do, a _mission,_ I don’t think any of us were scared at all. It all made perfect sense to me. Ada and Mama and Papa had taught us to take care of ourselves, and now that’s exactly what Papa was asking us to do. The fact that I was eight years old and my father had just asked us to kill the people that were coming to kill our whole family didn’t even ping on my radar as really, really messed up.

In a way, it still doesn’t.

Kyrat is a hard place. It was then, and it still is now. Like out in the forests, it was kill, or get killed yourself. Not that I was old enough to entirely understand what that even meant, the gravity of it.

Papa gazed down at us, his wild children, with so many emotions in his face. He didn’t want to leave us, I could tell. I could tell he thought it was a terrible idea, but he needed to go and it was worse if he didn’t. Now that I’m older I understand how that must have ripped at him, to leave us there with any possibility that we might be hurt. How it must have torn him in two, but his mates were in danger, our other _parents_ in so much more danger than we were.

“Listen, my darlings,” he said urgently. “There isn’t much time, you see. All of you know the spot where the last gate is, correct? Where the guard shack is? It’s nicely lit up…and anyone who tries to hurt you _has_ to come through that gate, either through it or over it. There’s no other way up here. So you three _watch that spot._ Always have at least one set of eyes on it. Even if a whole brigade tries to come through that bottleneck you can hold them off for a long time. But,” and he waved a long finger in our faces, “the very _moment_ they begin firing on your position, you get down to the vault and you shut the door and _do not come out until we come for you,_ do you hear me?” He stared at us with his eyes gone a little wild and strange. “Promise me…oh lord, if you love me at all _promise me_ that you’ll do this. Tell me the code to get into the vault, all three of you.”

We dutifully recited it. Pani had said hardly anything all this time, but now she said, “Papa, try not to worry so much. We’ll do it exactly like you said. Just exactly, okay? Now go help Ada and Mama. That’s where you belong now, with them, and we’ll be right here waiting for you to come back.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” he muttered, whatever that meant. “Thank you, Pani dear,” he said much more loudly, and having made the decision his face seemed less troubled. He walked away again and went into the bedroom…and came out with Ada’s rifle, the big sniper rifle with the silencer and everything. He handed it very carefully to Pani.

“This too, you remember,” he said, so gently. “My Ajay taught you.” He kissed her short, wild hair. “Start at the back and work your way forward. Make every shot count. Khilana, wait until they get close, until…hmm, the big statue of Kyra. If they get past your sister, gun them down. Remember, the barrel will want to climb on you, so keep it low. Short bursts.” He laid his big hands on my shoulders and handed me one of the radios. “Jian, I want you to reload for your sisters. Make sure Pani always has at least one extra mag ready to use, and make sure Khilana’s ammo belts stay good and straight and help her clear it if it jams. The radio is already set to the right frequency, but it’s not a scrambled channel. Use it only if you absolutely have to.” He gusted a giant sigh. “Jesus Christ, I can’t _believe_ I’m doing this…with any luck we’ll be back in an hour or two and it won’t bloody well matter. And if they get any closer than the first set of mani wheels, _you run for the vault!_ That’s the most important thing. Now repeat it all back to me while I change.”

After Pani put Ada’s rifle out on the balcony with the ammo, the three of us dutifully filed into the closet with him and repeated everything he’d said until he was satisfied, while he put on his own Guard fatigues.

There was a moment where Papa paused in getting dressed again and just stood there bare chested and barefoot, shirt forgotten in his hand. He gazed at us.

“I am a deplorable human being, and your mother is going to _kill_ me,” he said bleakly. “And then she’ll kill Ada for not stopping me somehow, even though he’s down there _with_ her. And after that, she may just kill me all over again.” I didn’t know what deplorable meant, but he might not have been wrong about Mama. He was doing the right thing, but I don’t know if she would have thought so, and she could be _mean_ sometimes, like a big angry bear.

Khilana went and got an energy bar and tucked it in his pocket while he was lacing his boots up and I brought him his kukri as he got his body armor on, the big one that was just like Ada’s. He pulled a beret on his head to hide his blond hair from snipers and with that he was ready.

“Out on the balcony now, my lovelies. Like Mama and Ada, I won’t tell you goodbye. Only…only that I love you all so very, very much…and that I will see you again very soon, as soon as I possibly can. Make sure to lock the door behind me.”

As soon as we did that, we dutifully trooped out onto the balcony and watched him go out the bottom door, cross the courtyard, and go back into the armory to get his own big gun. It was named Ripper and was almost as big as the MG42 that Khilana was currently loading. We all watched as he came out and slung Ripper over his back and trotted down the road, his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. He didn’t bother with any of the vehicles, just his own long legs eating up the distance between himself and his wife and his husband.

 

We saw him off as the sun slowly sank in oranges and golds and reds behind the mountains.

 

Being out there was _cold_ as the wind off the big mountain blew against the side of the Palace, but we tucked up under the eaves and it wasn’t so bad. I went back inside and got our coffee that we didn’t finish and warmed the cups back up in the microwave so we could have something hot to drink. The taste was starting to grow on me a little. While I was inside, I went back to my room and pulled my treasure box out from under my bed and dug around until I found the watch that Ada had given to me. It was the watch that he had been wearing when he first came to Kyrat and Papa had made fun of it and called it cheap, but Ada had just smiled serenely and told him that watch had been through hell and back and still worked fine, and how many fancy expensive watches could have held up through that? ‘Yep,’ he had said, looking fondly at it, ‘I definitely got my twenty bucks’ worth.’

The watch face had an adjustable bezel and I used to play with it as he held me on his lap as a baby. I liked the clicking sound it made. When he gave it to me, it instantly became my most prized possession, and I longed for the day that I grew big enough to actually wear it. I was getting close if I buckled it on the very last hole in the strap, but it would still slip off over my hand if I tugged on it. So I tucked it into my pocket instead and went to go get our cups and a blanket.

By that time it was nearly dark, but my watch face glowed so we could see what time it was. Before it got all the way dark I made sure we had the right bullets for Pani’s rifle and she and I loaded the four magazines we had, five shots to a mag. Khilana had already gotten the big gun set up, so then all we had to do was wait. Every so often there would be a flash of orangish light down at the Fortress, and then a few seconds later I would hear the boom of the explosion. The rattle of rifle fire came in intermittent bursts.

We were warm enough sitting with our backs to the big windows with the blanket over us and the coffee. The excitement of the thing was starting to wear off a little by that point. My whole right side was chilled since Khilana and I had put Pani between us, on account of her being the smallest. She got cold a lot faster. Worse than being a little cold was being bored though, as we had nothing to do but sit quietly and stare at the brightly-lit patch of dirt in front of the big gate, way down the hill. It seemed like half the night must have passed as I tried not to fidget and I looked at my watch, but only two hours had passed since Papa left. I sighed.

Pani put her head on my shoulder.

“Oh, no you _don’t,_ ” I said sternly. “Don’t you dare fall asleep! I’ll tell Papa if you do.”

“Don’t you dare tattle on _me,_ Jian Min! I’ll make you regret it.” She yawned a little. “Anyway, I feel like how the hobbits must’ve felt when Aragorn had to leave them all alone on Weathertop while he hunted the Ringwraiths. They couldn’t stay awake either,” Pani said.

Khilana sniffed in contempt from her other side. “All that stuff was just in the movie. That wasn’t how it happened in the books at _all._ There was loads more stuff.”

All three of us had read at least parts of The Lord of the Rings, but by the time she was twelve Khilana had those things just about memorized. They were her favorites, all those old tales about elves and wizards and little people in the Shire.

“Well, if you’re such a smartypants, why don’t you tell me and Jian all about it,” Pani said, although there was no meanness in it as she muffled another yawn.

“Yeah, tell us a story!”

“Okay, _fine,_ ” Khilana said, and I couldn’t see her eyes rolling rolling in the dark, but I sure could hear them. But she did tell Pani and I all about the hobbits finding themselves in the Barrow-Downs and the wights and everything. I tried not to show it but that story scared me a little. I didn’t _really_ think that there was such a thing as undead barrow-wights, but the idea of those was more frightening than the idea of real flesh and blood soldiers. At least those we could shoot.

After a little while Khilana really got into it and told us stories for hours, about the House of Elrond and Galadriel and Minas Tirith. She did different voices and everything, and that helped a little, to keep us awake, but by that time I was getting really tired too and trying not to show it. We were trying to be the grownups that Papa needed us to be, but we were also three little kids up way past their bedtime. I sighed and looked at my watch. 2:45.

“What about the time that Sam and Frodo were in the forests of Ithilien,” Pani said sleepily, and her voice sounded kind of far away even though she was sitting right beside me.

“Yeah, okay,” Khilana said, like she was dreaming. “Ithilien was a beautiful forest that was guarded by the Rangers from Gondor, and Frodo and Sam were trying to find their way through there but there were lots of enemies, bad guys from Haradrim to the East. They were great archers and were mounted on oliphaunts and Sam was amazed because he’d only heard stories about them and he had really wanted to see one…”

“Hang on,” I said, waking up a little, “don’t you mean elephants?”

“ _No,_ Jian, I don’t mean _elephants,_ ” she said scathingly. “If I meant elephant I would have _said_ elephant, you moron.”

Well, that woke me right up.

“Don’t you call me a moron! Elephant, oliphaunt, it’s the same thing!”

“No it’s _not,_ they’re not the same at all,” she cried. Our voices were quickly rising. She could get under my skin like no one else. I usually didn’t even bother to argue with her, but I was exhausted and stressed and worried and it all came to a head over elephants. Or oliphaunts. Whatever.

“If you’re soooo _smart,_ ” I yelled back, “What did the book say about them, huh? I bet it said they’re really big and have four legs and a trunk, just like an elephant! ‘Cause they’re the same thing, Khilana!”

“Stop being such an _infant,_ Jian. Of course they’re different, because if they _meant_ an elephant it would have said _elephant…_ ”

We were back to the beginning of this stupid argument, and even I could acknowledge that we weren’t going to get anywhere. I got up and hooked my elbows over the rail and looked out over the dark valley. Something was still on fire down at the Fortress, casting an orangish flickering light up the sides of some of the buildings, but we were really too far away to see anything. We hadn’t heard any gunshots in a while.

Khilana had gotten up too and was still yelling about how stupid I was and I wanted to run away from that so badly, but there was nowhere to go. If I went back inside, that meant I was giving up and was a coward and not brave like our parents, like Papa asked me to be. I remember running my fingers over the radio, wishing I could hear their voices again. Ada, and Papa, and Mama.

As I was gazing off into the dark and trying to ignore my stupid sister, the gunfire started up again, pop pop pop from down there, but I still couldn’t see anything.

There was only the tiniest sliver of moon so the valley was all dark, and that might have saved our lives because from a little further to the right a flash caught my attention. The muzzle flash from a gun firing from somewhere outside the Fortress. My eyes widened, and some instinct kicked in like a voice in my head, and that voice roared, _Jian, DUCK!!_

It sounded an awful lot like Papa.

I turned and dove on top of Khilana. The sniper was so far away that I had seen the flash before we heard the distant crack of the rifle, but the noise and the round that slammed into the bulletproof windows behind us and ricocheted off arrived at the same time.

“Oh no, they already know we’re here,” Pani moaned.

She had still been sitting down so it had gone way over her head, but as I twisted to look up at the window I could see the mark from the bullet and it would’ve been really close to our heads if Khilana and I had still been standing up.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, thinking quickly. The adrenaline had me _wide_ awake. “I think it was a stray shot.”

“Jian’s right,” Khilana said quietly, from under me. “If they knew we were up here, they would have kept firing. We were yelling and everything.” She sounded a little ashamed as I clambered off of her, staying low. “Why did you do that, Jian? I think…I think you might have saved me.”

“What do you mean, why did I do that,” I retorted, keeping my voice to a whisper. “I’m your brother, I’d do anything for you. And you’re the one that’s stupid, if you don’t know that.”

I didn’t realize it was even true until it was out of my mouth, but it was. It was true and Khilana threw her arms around my neck and hugged me hard, both of us there on our knees. Pani came over and hugged us both, our heads together. And just like that, from that day on…the three of us were inseparable.

As we stayed there holding onto each other warmly, I felt Pani stiffen up.

“Oh _no,_ ” she moaned again. “They’re here, _they’re here…_ ”

Now, when I think back on that night, I realize that if we hadn’t fought over elephants, if that random sniper who was trying to hit someone up on the Fortress battlements hadn’t missed their shot and struck the Palace windows instead, almost nailing one of us…if none of that had happened, those rebels might have snuck into the grounds and found King Min’s three children snuggled under a blanket and sleeping like babies.

Right before they took us hostage, or maybe just cut our throats.

But it didn’t happen that way. Instead they got the surprise of their lives as they carefully pushed open the big gate with a low, echoing creak, just wide enough for a person to slide through.

When Papa and Mama and Ada had brokered peace with the Golden Path all those years ago, before we were born, Amita had been their leader. But a lot of the rebels hadn’t wanted to follow her at all on account of her being a girl, which is dumb. So when they signed the peace accords, a lot of her soldiers didn’t lay down their arms like they were supposed to. They just fled into the hills and made new factions and kept fighting, and sometimes they fought together against the Royal Army and sometimes they just fought each other. ‘It’s been so long that they don’t know how to do anything else,’ Ada had said once, sadly.

So these particular guys were wearing green and red, some group I didn’t recognize. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t ours and they weren’t supposed to be there and they knew it as they slid through the gate cautiously. Three, no, four of them, as they investigated the guard shack to make sure no one was hiding in there.

Pani moved away from us almost as if she were in a daze, as she bent and hefted Ada’s big rifle and mechanically checked the mag and flipped off the safety as she settled it on the porch rail. Her face had gone hard, with that same alert animal look that Ada often wore. I watched as she became something else than my big-little sister, her dark hawk’s eyes seeking targets.

Khilana leaned over the rail, eyes squinted.

“Pani,” she said, low and urgent, “the one furthest away is getting ready to come out of the guard shack. The others are keeping watch while he checks, but they’re all looking forward, they won’t see him drop. Soon as his head’s clear of the doorframe, take him.”

“Okay,” Pani whispered, and adjusted the tiny knobs and dials on the scope. I stood ready with an extra clip just in case it all went tits up, as Mama was fond of saying. I watched as Pani steadied herself, as her childish hands held that giant rifle perfectly balanced, the tip of her finger just on the trigger. She sucked in a deep breath, held it…and squeezed gently as the stock kicked into her shoulder.

A silenced gun is still loud. Not loud enough to really need earplugs, but still plenty loud, not like it is in the movies and on tv and stuff. Our parents liked to make fun of all the stuff they get wrong in tv and movie gunfights. But we were way too far away for the terrorists to hear the report of the rifle, and we all watched as the guy on the end fell back into the shack, one of his booted feet kicking once. Then he was still. His fellow soldiers never suspected a thing.

“You got him, you got him,” Khilana whispered excitedly, clapping her on the shoulder but Pani was already lining up her next target, watching and waiting for the next straggler.

We didn’t have to wait long. The next one that hung back did so to light a cigarette and I rolled my eyes. I was glad that these guys were so stupid, but part of me couldn’t quite believe it either. Ada’s nose was so good that he could track somebody through the woods just by that smell alone, that strong smell that didn’t belong. In any case, the fool’s lighter illuminated his face when he clicked it on, giving Pani a perfectly lit target to aim for. He went down in a heap and didn’t even twitch this time, off on the side of the road where the shadows were deeper.

That only left two. Two shots, two down.

“You’re doing great, Pani. You have three rounds left,” I whispered, just to help her remember. Sometimes when you were so focused like that it was easy to forget. “I have the next five ready right here.” She didn’t twitch a muscle at my voice, stock-still like a predator right before the lunge.

It was going to be much harder now; the two men were on the darkest part of the road, far from the floodlights at the gate, and there was only the faint starlight and the crescent moon to illuminate them. I doubted we’d get so lucky again with the cigarette thing. Pani didn’t have a night-vision scope, but she also knew that roadway better than those terrorists did and knew exactly how far away they were. The next shot she lined up with a combination of the scope and using the iron sights mounted underneath. The one in front had something on his chest, something shiny and metal that shone a little in the dim light, like a buckle or something, but she couldn’t nail him yet without alerting the other one.

Unfortunately, the next shot went a little wide. It was so close, another two inches over would’ve done it, but it clipped the guy’s ear and he howled in pain, clapping his hand over it. The leader whipped around to stare, and she snapped the next shot off trying to wing either of them but missed. Pani and I hurried to get the mag ejected and the next one in while Khilana watched. They were awfully close to the big statue of Kyra that Papa had talked about.

“Oh, they are so dumb,” Khilana whispered. We half expected them to be really scared of a sniper in the dark and turn around and scurry for the gate, in which case Pani could probably have gotten them both in the back. Or even more likely, for them to separate and try to find cover, but there wasn’t much and they maybe thought we had night-vision. But that’s not what they did. What they did was yell and charge up the road towards us.

Their sudden screams made me fumble a little as I worked to get the magazine lined up right. One of the metal edges kept catching on the housing and my shaky hands weren’t helping any.

“Jian…Jian _hurry,_ ” Pani hissed at me, the rifle too heavy for her to hold for long. At one point I nearly dropped the thing, but it finally slid home and I slapped it as hard as I could.

“Go, go!”

They were nearly to the statue now and would go out of our sight for a few seconds as they ran under it. Khilana double-checked the MG42 and yanked the charging handle back.

“Wait,” Pani whispered. “If you fire that thing and there’s any terrorists still down in the Fortress, they’ll know we’re up here. They might come and investigate. There’s only two, I can get ‘em when they come around the corner.”

“But Papa said…”

“Khilana, _trust me._ I can do it, I know I can. Jian can help me.”

She was quiet for several seconds. “Okay,” she finally whispered back. “Okay, I trust you.”

“It’s…it’s starting to get really heavy, even on the rail,” Pani muttered to me. “Can you help me hold it steady?”

I leaned in and put my hands exactly where she showed me while Khilana stayed ready on the other gun, just in case, and she aimed while I tried to stay as still as I could, another magazine weighing my pocket down but at the ready.

“Any second now, they’re going to come tearing around that corner. They’re trying to be tough, but they’re being awfully stupid about it,” she said.

“I have it lined up right where they’ll pop out. Imbeciles,” Pani said, which was a favorite word of Papa’s for stupid people. Often prefaced by _fucking,_ but we weren’t allowed to say that one. He really wasn’t supposed to either, Ada was always fussing at him for it.

I gritted my teeth and tried not to let my tired arms shake and mess up Pani’s shot. I’d pushed up my sleeves to keep them out of the way and also tried to ignore my freezing fingers and the way the rough wood of the balcony rail was digging into my arms and probably leaving splinters. I did my best to ignore all that.

“Keep it steady for just a few more seconds, Jian. Almost,” Pani whispered. “Almost. Almost…right… _now_!”

She had judged it perfectly. The guy with the shiny buckle on his chest came around that corner only to be blown away as soon as his head appeared, directly in line with the barrel of Ada’s rifle. The man stumbled backwards…well, I guess it was a _body_ by that point, but he stumbled back into his partner and knocked him over backwards onto his butt, his lap full of corpse. He started screaming again but this time it was in pure terror, and I felt a little sorry for him as Pani fired again and that scream cut off abruptly. But then I thought about Ada and Mama and Papa down there probably getting shot at and surrounded by explosions and fire and who knew what all else, and my heart got all hard. If they hadn’t tried to come after us, they could’ve just gone back home and still been alive. So I didn’t feel too bad at the time.

Later I kept thinking about it though, that guy’s scream. I really wished we could have killed him by surprise like the others. Like how when Ada went hunting and he would drop a sambar with his bow and it never even knew what had happened to it, it didn’t have time to be scared, it just fell down and then we had it for dinner and it was way better that way.

But mostly what I felt was just relief, relieved that four of them were lying dead along the road and nothing bad had happened to the three of us and my knees went shaky for a moment, so I sat down and put my head on my knees and just breathed. Pani sat down beside me and balanced the rifle in her lap and reloaded it, just in case, but I think we all sensed that those four were all we were going to get.

“Four’s too many to be proper scouts,” Khilana said, “and two few to be a force to take the Palace.”

“I bet they thought they’d be smart and get up here to loot the place while their buddies were still fighting,” Pani said darkly. “Papa turned off all the lights before he left. I bet they thought there wasn’t anybody even up here, or maybe just the servants. Who wouldn’t be able to stop them from doing whatever they wanted to do.”

Just then the radio clipped to my coat pocket squawked, and someone said, “Jian? Jian, are you there?!”

It was _Mama._

I grabbed that radio so fast I almost broke the clip on it. “ _Mama!_ Mama I’m here! We’re all here, are you okay…”

Pani reached over and pulled my thumb off the button. I’d forgotten in my excitement that you had to let off of it to hear the response. Nothing for a few seconds, and then it crackled to life again.

“Jian, you kids, listen to me…oh, _oh shi_ …” and then with a sharp crack and a burst of static, the radio went dead, as if it had never come on at all.

“ _Mama! Mama,_ ” I yelled into the radio…and then burst into tears. I couldn’t help it, that was too much. Hearing her voice cut off like that was the last straw on a night that, as I figured out many years later, would have had your average non-Kyrati adult gibbering and fleeing in terror. But I merely sat there and cried my heart out. I was doing my best but I was still just a little boy who missed his mother and his fathers and was terribly worried about them. But I had my sisters, and they took care of me. Pani held me and muffled my crying with the front of her coat and patted my head, and Khilana didn’t say a word about my tears, no mean remarks about me being a baby or a sniveling coward or anything. She didn’t say a thing…and even through all of that she hadn’t taken her eyes off of that gate, not even for a second.

Eventually I cried myself out enough to get ahold of myself again. It didn’t take all that long, I was cold and exhausted and really too tired to keep going. I pulled my watch out and checked the time: nearly five.

“How about you guys lay down and wrap up warm and see if you can get some sleep,” Khilana said. “We’ll do a watch, just like the fellowship did when they had to rest when it was dangerous. Jian, give me your watch and I’ll stay awake for another half an hour, I can go that long, and then I’ll wake Pani up and then it’ll be your turn.”

I thought that was a pretty smart idea. “Okay, but…please be careful with it.”

“I will,” she assured me, as she buckled it on. “I know Ada gave it to you and that makes it important.” I really, really liked this new, unbossy, actually nice Khilana.

I laid down and wrapped up in the blanket with Pani. I wasn’t sure I could sleep at all from worry, even though I was so tired, but I was also eight.

I was out in seconds.

Someone shook me awake again after what also felt like only seconds but was actually more than an hour. It was much brighter, nearly sunrise. It was Pani who had woken me: Khilana was asleep beside me.

“Jian, _look,_ ” she said, and this time there were tears in her eyes, but for a way different reason. “They’re home, they’re coming _home._ ”

 

Like Gandalf and Eomer and the Rohirrim, they came with the dawn. The three pillars of my life.

 

Not even bothering with a car, they came walking up the road laughing and _singing_ in the bright gold morning. Well, maybe not singing so much as just yelling the words. They were still too far away to hear what they were, but they looked so happy. Even though they had Ada between them with their arms around him and he was limping a little, a big bandage on his knee.

Pani and I shook Khilana awake, but before we went scrambling down the hill to them we put the safeties on the guns and unloaded them carefully just like we’d been taught to do. That before anything else. As soon as it was safe the three of us jetted out of our apartment and downstairs, banging through the front door and down the hill. I slid in a patch of mud and nearly went down, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I would have jumped up and kept going and gotten them all muddy too.

Once I got closer I could hear that they were singing that silly old song about the lady that fights the pink robots. Khilana and Pani were ahead of me and had already disappeared around the first big curve, and so I put on a burst of speed as the yell-singing became a babble of cheerful shouts. I was lucky to not have caused a collision, because when I skidded on the gravel in that blind corner they were all right there: Ada awkwardly kneeling with his arms full of Khilana while Papa had swung Pani up in his, covering her face with kisses, and that left Mama, _Mama,_ with her strong arms held out to me and I don’t know if I had ever run so fast as I did then, desperate to hold her, to be held. As I ran she grew all blurred in my vision and I hadn’t even known I was crying, the wind whipping my tears back.

Right as I got to her I noted that her eyes were glittering suspiciously and it was hard for me to believe because Mama never cried at _anything._ And then I was swept up in her arms and she held me so tightly that it was kind of hard to breathe, but I didn’t care.

“My little boy,” she whispered. “My sweet little boy…”

“Are you okay,” I whispered back. She had a lot of blood in her thick curly hair and I couldn’t tell if it was hers or not.

“I’m just fine baby, I’m so sorry we worried you,” as she let go of me enough to tip my chin up in her dirty hand. In her other hand she held up the remains of the radio that Papa had taken with him so I could see it. A bullet had gone right through it, and I gulped. “Not even a scratch on me, thanks to your Papa. He got there just in time to help us. I absolutely do not _like_ the fact that he left you up there alone, but I’m…I’m glad he did.” There was a tiny flash of anger in her dark eyes.

“Mama, please don’t be mad at him…you _needed_ him, like you said, he came just when you needed him. We were just fine by ourselves,” I said, a little pride creeping into my voice.

“Yeah, we saw that. Four Red Kukri separatists lying dead along the road, each with a single large caliber rifle round buried in their skulls.” There was a hint of pride in her voice too. “We’ll talk about that later, okay? Go give Ada a hug, he was so worried about you guys.”

We all traded off, so that everybody could have hugs. Ada was sitting in the dirt by then, his lumpily taped and bandaged leg stuck out in front of him as he pulled me into his lap.

“It’s only a bag of ice,” he reassured me. “Just a sprain, same old knee that I hurt years ago. Khilana told me what happened, how the three of you worked together. I can’t even begin to say how proud I am.” When Ada said that I felt about ten feet tall. He didn’t say it often, so it really meant something when he held me close and told me that in his gentle voice. I leaned my forehead against his neck for a moment, with relief and joy bubbling up in me that we were all okay. Ada touched my back. “Go on and go hug your Papa, he looks like he could use one,” he said in his quiet way and kissed me, his whiskers tickling my cheek.

I looked over and Papa was sitting on the ground too, but his head hung down like he was too tired to hold it up. He’d lost his hat somewhere and his dirty hair hung in his eyes. They were all _really_ dirty and bloody, but he looked the worst, the most exhausted. As I moved over to him he lifted his head and smiled at me, but there was a giant bruise blooming red and purple along one whole side of his face. That stunned me for a moment, that somebody had _hit_ my Papa like that, even though I knew he had been hurt much worse before. He had a lot of scars under his clothes. They all three did. But to see his hurt face made that stunned feeling turn to mad as I touched it gently.

“My brave boy,” he said, as he turned his head to kiss my fingers and tugged me down to sit between his knees. “But Jian lad, it’s not worth being angry over. It probably looks much worse than it feels, I assure you.”

We sat there quietly together and listened to Khilana tell Mama and Ada all about what happened during the night. She was definitely the best at telling stories. Papa sighed against my hair.

“I’m afraid I’m getting a bit old for this sort of thing. Starting to get old and slow,” he said, with a cheeky grin when I twisted around to look at him.

“I don’t believe you. When you and Ada spar, you can still pin him at least half the time.”

“Well, just between you and me, I believe that sometimes he lets me win,” and he winked at me. And then his face sobered. “Nevertheless, I’ll be sixty next year, and that means I will have ruled for _forty_ of those years. So I’ve decided that would be a fine time to turn over the reins to someone else. What do you think of that?”

“You mean, you won’t be the King anymore?” It suddenly felt like the world had dropped out from under me. “But…”

“Shouldn’t I give your Ada his fair turn at it though? He’s been waiting for an awfully long time. And I’ll still help him, of course. But no, it means I won’t be the King anymore…but I’ll get a fancy new title. The King’s Consort.”

“Oh. Because Ada will be King?”

“Yes, because Ada will be King and he’s my husband. And your mother will still be the Queen, because she’s mine and Ada’s wife.”

“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense. That’d be all right, I guess,” and he ruffled my hair. “But…Mama’s not _really_ mad at you, is she? For leaving us by ourselves?”

“Hmm, well…even if she is, she’ll get over it.” But he whispered it so she wouldn’t hear him, and I smiled.

After that we all got up to go home, and I helped pull Papa up to his feet as he groaned. We all walked that last bit of road leading up to the Palace together, leaning on each other and chattering happily about what we might have for breakfast.

As soon as we got inside, Mama ordered everyone to go take baths and get into our pajamas while she went and called down to the Fortress and gave the all-clear order, letting them know it was safe to let the staff back up. I was so tired that I almost fell asleep standing in the shower until Khilana banged on the door and asked how much longer I thought I’d be. When I got out I had forgotten all about leaving my treasure box open on my bed, and that made me remember Ada’s watch and I gasped and was ready to run and get it back from Khilana in just my towel…but there right on top so that I would see it was the watch. She had remembered that it was special and had put it right back with my other treasures and hadn’t snooped through the rest of them. I smiled. I _definitely_ preferred this new Khilana.

Since the servants were still down at the bottom of the hill, Mama just made us all a lot of toast and we had that and butter and jam and juice and it tasted amazing after our long night. She made Papa sit with an ice pack on his face since it looked even worse once he’d scrubbed the dirt and blood and gunpowder residue off.

Everyone was busy with the food until Ada spoke.

“You know what I hate,” he said, his face suddenly hard. “The fact that my kids are now murderers before they’ve even started high school.”

“Oh my dear boy,” Papa said, with that silly, flippant tone he used sometimes, “not _murderers._ Little soldiers, doing their bit for King and Country!”

Dead silence. It was obviously the wrong thing to say.

“Goddammit, Pagan.” And his soft, cold tone was somehow worse than if he’d yelled.

Ada stared at Papa from across the table with his steady hawk’s eyes, but Papa wouldn’t meet them. He kept his focused on the butter dish.

“What would you have had me do,” he said, and it came out of him hoarse and strangled and _pleading._ Papa never sounded like that. “What would you have had me _do?_ I nearly lost the both of you down there. If I hadn’t come when I did…and if I had stayed up here instead, what then? Our forces overrun, and a whole battalion’s worth of those bastards streaming up the mountain. How long could I have possibly held out up here, do you think? How long could I have kept them alive, with hundreds of them coming at us and no…no _heart_ left in me…”

“Ajay, he was right. I don’t like it either…but he was right,” and her voice was very quiet too, quiet and a little sad, also not much like herself. And then, more loudly, “C’mon kids, time to brush your teeth, no dawdling, come _on_ …”

We left them like that, Ada staring him down, Papa refusing to raise his eyes.

I assumed that she wanted us to go right to bed, but she came to the door and just stood there watching us, even though we didn’t squabble over who could get to the water or who had the toothpaste tube like usual. She just stood there watching with a little smile, and when we were done she beckoned us over.

“Just for today, I can’t stand the thought of not having the three of you in my sight. Just for today,” and she led us to their bedroom where the blinds were pulled so it was all nice and dim.

Papa and Ada were already snuggled up together in the middle of their big bed, and that was good to see, that they’d worked things out. That Ada forgave him, that he understood he had made the best of bad choices. He was holding Papa like he was something precious, just stroking his hair. Papa had his arms around him too, his bare chest pale against Ada’s brown skin. Mama got in to snuggle up against Papa’s back so that they were holding him from both sides.

There was still plenty of room for us too and we all climbed in, trying to be quiet and not jostle them too much. I ended up curled up against Ada’s legs.

That big bed with all six of us in it was the safest place in the world right then.

I thought he was asleep, but from somewhere above my head Papa murmured, “I love you. I love you all so very much.” He shifted around until his leg was touching me, and the other was resting against Pani and Khilana, and Mama and Ada both had their arms around him so we were all touching each other, connected through him. I sighed with contentment.

Every time I closed my eyes though, I would see those guys that we killed. I tried to think about nice things instead, like how warm and full of toast and juice I was and how Khilana was tucked against me on one side and Papa’s leg was a comforting weight on the other. How we were all safe and nobody really got hurt, not really.

Thinking it over, I understood why Ada had been upset. I wish we hadn’t have had to kill those guys either, that we didn’t have enemies, that we didn’t have to fight to survive. But Papa was right too. If he had been just a little bit later, it might have been too late. He definitely made the right decision even if it was hard, and if the cost of us all being okay was some bad dreams, even nightmares…I was more than all right with that. But I doubted I would have bad dreams. Not now, not here, surrounded by all the people who loved me.

If anybody tried to come at us right now, Mama and Ada and Papa would tear them into little pieces. They were so brave. And now I knew that they got scared too, even though they were big and strong, and that they didn’t always know what the right thing to do was. That didn’t make me trust them or believe in them any less though. If anything I believed in them more, because it didn’t matter if being brave was hard, they just did it anyway.

And with that last thought, I sank down into sleep.

 

That year that I was eight wasn’t an easy one for my family, and a lot of other bad stuff also happened that I won’t get into, but that other stuff we were all able to face together. So it wasn’t too bad. In time I stopped dreaming about that night and I was so glad, because it wasn’t those dead soldiers I dreamed about. It was what my imagination came up with as to what happened down at the Fortress. In my nightmares it had all gone wrong and Papa hadn’t made it in time, or they had been overwhelmed, and I dreamed of fire and going down there and finding their broken bodies with blood everywhere.

Sometimes me and Khilana and Pani would all end up in one bed, and that helped a lot. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that Papa and Ada and Mama probably shared the same bad dreams. But if one of them would wake up scared, the others would be right there.

The next year when I turned nine was the year that Papa abdicated, the end of an era. I thought he might be a little sad about it, but he was pretty overjoyed to be able to get to spend more time with us and lay around the house and read a lot of the books that he’d wanted to catch up on and take naps in the sunshine. Sometimes he would drag the deck chairs together and persuade Mama to cuddle up with him out there on the balcony, their arms around each other and their foreheads pressed together. Sometimes they’d persuade Ada to take the afternoon off and join them. They made a big happy pile out there, snoozing away.

It wasn’t until many years later and I had fallen in love myself, _really_ fallen in love, that I truly began to understand just how strong my parents were together. And they showed me that strength every day. When I was eight, the three of them had been married for more than a decade and were still madly in love with each other. When I turned eighteen, they were still just as crazy about each other as they were when I was a kid. They all taught me how to fight, how to kill, how to be strong and tough and resilient.

But way more importantly than that, they taught me how to love.

How to be a man that I could be proud of being.

 

End

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, questions/comments/suggestions welcome!


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